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The pharmaceutical and biotech industry is tasked with one purpose: to improve the quality of life for people. But, what if that task were being compromised by the medicines they’re creating?

In terms of their clinical results, opioids have shown demonstrably positive impacts on reducing pain associated with a chronic disease, and they are a staple therapy for certain diseases. In 2012, some 259 million prescriptions were written for prescription opioids, which would be enough to ensure that every adult in the U.S. received their own bottle.

Opioids are a highly addictive therapy that, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, led to 20,101 overdose-related deaths in 2015.

In fact, the dangers of opioid addiction and overdose-related death have become such a reality that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently requested Endo International take Opana ER, an opioid therapy, off the market.

Greece has become the latest European country to legalize marijuana for medical purposes.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said:
“From now on, the country is turning its page, as Greece is now included in countries where the delivery of medical cannabis to patients in need is legal.” Mr. Tsipras said at a press conference, as reported by the Greek Government Gazette.

The Prime Minister also said cannabis would be downgraded from a Table A drug – equivalent to class A in the UK – to a Table B drug, in which category are other drugs like methadone and opium with approved medical values, as reported by Dope Magazine.

Greece is the sixth EU country to take this action after the Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain have already legalised the drug for medical use.

It is yet to be seen whether Greece will go further to allow full-scale cannabis legislation, for recreational use as well as medical, joining Portugal, the only other European country to do so.

The United Wa State Army (UWSA) claimed opium poppy fields have now been completely eradicated from the southern area of the Wa Self-Administered Division bordering Thailand, as it incinerated seized drugs to mark the UN’s international day against drug abuse on Monday.

According to the commander, a total of 2.7 million methamphetamine tablets, four kilograms of heroin, and 14 kilograms of raw opium were seized by the UWSA anti-narcotics squad between January 2014 and June 2017. Thirty drug dealers and 60 drug users were arrested over the same time period by the narcotics squad.

UWSA began controlling opium poppy growing in 1996 and adopted policies to combat the production of drugs in 2005.

In 2000, UWSA relocated residents living in the southern part of Wa Self-Administered Division to the northern part, and also relocated those from northern part to southern part to grow substitute crops, said the commander.

With 26,100 hectares dedicated to opium poppies, Mexico continues to be the third largest producer of the plant from which heroin is made, says the 2017 report of the UNODC, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The estimated area of poppy plantations in Mexico was based on data from 2014 and 2015 and while relatively small there has been a marked upward trend.

In 2005, just 3,300 hectares of land were used to grow opium poppies in Mexico, but four years later the figure was up to 19,500 hectares.

By 2012, a thousand hectares were added to the cultivation of opium poppy, a source of heroin and morphine.

The amount of heroin confiscated has increased over the years as well, from 362 kilograms in 2011 to 546 in 2015.

Opioid-related hospitalisations among women in the United States increased far faster than among men between 2005 and 2014, a federal government report says.

Among women, hospitalisations involving opioid painkillers or heroin rose 75 percent, compared to 55 percent among men, according to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

The surge among women during that 10-year period meant that by 2014 males and females were being hospitalised at a similar rate — about 225 hospitalisations per 100,000 people.

In 2014, hospitalisation rates among women were highest in West Virginia, Maryland and Massachusetts, exceeding 350 per 100,000 people. Among men, the highest rates were in the District of Columbia, New York and Maryland, topping 440 hospitalisations per 100,000.

Misuse of potent painkillers such as OxyContin (oxycodone) and Vicoprofen (hydrocodone/ibuprofen) sends 1,000 Americans to emergency rooms each day. Opioid-related overdose deaths have quadrupled since 1999, according to federal statistics.

Pollinator week is June 19-25 2017. The first “National Pollinator Week” was celebrated 10 years ago. How very important pollinators are.

In the wild, cacao trees (Theobroma cacao) prefer to live in the moist understory of the rainforests in Central and South America, Africa and Asia. The flowers sprout straight from the trunk and lower branches to form cacao pods, courtesy of midge pollination. The National Park Service works with “sister parks” in South America that are looking into the problem of disappearing chocolate midges.

The “lungs of the planet” are being cleared and turned into monoculture farms that support little wildlife. In 2015, United Cacao cleared over five thousand acres of pristine rainforest in Peru to make way for their cacao plantation. Efforts are now being directed toward locating small cacao farms at the edge or within the rainforest ecosystems. How much do you like your chocolate?

In the U.S., one square foot of indoor marijuana cultivation uses four times more energy than the same space in a hospital, eight times more energy than a commercial building, and 20 times more energy than a center for religious worship, according to a study by Lewis and Clark College.

In National Geographic magazine’s June 2015 edition, Editor-In-Chief Susan Goldberg wrote about the growing number of states that had legalizedmarijuana for medicinal and recreational use. At the time, less than half of the states in the U.S. had legalized the substance for medical use. Now, medical marijuana use is legal in 29 states and the District of Columbia.

“The disconnect between the willingness of some states to regulate, sell, and tax marijuana and the federal reluctance to allow research to progress leaves an increasing number of people without the knowledge to make informed, science-based choices.”

As the demand for CBD-based products explodes in the U.S. and continues to thrive across the globe, Cannabis-based companies race to develop and introduce the newest and higher quality products to capitalize on themomentum. Much like most of the cannabis and legal medical marijuana market, vendors and manufacturers focus on delivering a high degree of quality infused in their CBD-based products.

Kanna (Sceletium tortuosum) is known to elevate mood, decrease anxiety, stress, and tension, and suppress the appetite. In moderate doses, it induces euphoria and acts as a powerful stimulant, but can actually have a sedative effect in larger doses.

A North Carolina man was arrested last month when police discovered an acre of opium poppies growing in his yard.

The alleged grower, Cody Xiong, faces a rare charge in the United States. Despite a raging opioid epidemic in the country, fields of home-grown opium are rare. The sheriff in the North Carolina case said the discovery was only the second time the plant had been found growing in the United States this year, WBTV reported.

There are two big reasons for this lack of agricultural entrepreneurship: effective U.S. law enforcement and the ease of importing heroin made from opium poppies grown elsewhere, said H. Douglas Wankel, a former assistant administrator and chief of operations in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

A North Carolina man was arrested last month when police discovered an acre of opium poppies growing in his yard.

The alleged grower, Cody Xiong, is a rare criminal in the United States. Despite a raging opioid epidemic in the country, fields of home-grown opium are rare. The sheriff in the North Carolina case said the discovery was only the second time the plant had been found growing in the United States this year, WBTV reported.

Growing enough poppies to make heroin in the United States doesn’t make much economic sense compared to importing the drug from more lawless regions, Wankel said. Compared to marijuana, opium poppies are more conspicuous and harder to process, and carry much harsher penalties for growing.

Lawmakers and advocates are backing legislation that would regulate and tax an industry that would be open to those who are 21 years of age or older. It’s a recycled proposal that has not gained significant traction in past sessions. Whether it can overcome hurdles in the final two weeks of the legislative session, especially in the Republican-controlled state Senate, remains unclear.

The bill has undergone revision and was reintroduced just last week. It’s core tenants are: Marijuana would be removed from the list of Schedule 1 controlled substances in state law; New Yorkers 21 or older would be allowed to cultivate up to six plants at home, and those of age would be allowed to possess or transport up to two pounds of marijuana and four-and-a-half ounces of concentrated cannabis.

New York Democrats have toyed with the idea of modifying the law to legalize recreational marijuana in the past but efforts have fallen flat. Public support statewide for recreational marijuana has been mixed, polling has shown in recent years.

Clarksville native Christopher Miller was recently arrested in Nashville, TN for attempting to sell kratom. Kratom is an herb that recently faced up against a possible DEA ban. Luckily for the thousands who use kratom for pain, depression, anxiety or even to wean off of opiates, bipartisan support of congress and medical doctors, ethnobotanists, pharmacologists and even one of the foremost addiction specialists, Johns Hopkins professor Dr. Jack Henningfield, the DEA was forced to back down, a literally unprecedented occurrence in the history of the agency.

Unfortunately, due to a great deal of misinformation, some of which comes from sources that are questionable at best, Nashville’s Metro PD were misinformed about the plant.

Marijuana is a combination of shredded leaves, stems and flower buds of the Cannabis sativa plant. Marijuana can be smoked, eaten, vaporized, brewed and even taken topically, but most people smoke it.

According to research from the Potency Monitoring Project, the average THC content of marijuana has soared from less than 1 percent in 1972, to 3 to 4 percent in the 1990s, to nearly 13 percent in 2010. Today, some retail marijuana has 30 percent THC or more. The increased potency makes it difficult to determine the short- and long-term effects of marijuana.

How Cannabis is consumed

In a 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 17.4 million people in the United States said they had used marijuana in the past month.

A 2016 Gallup poll found that one in eight people smoke marijuana and 43 percent of U.S. adults admit to trying it.

One company with a cannabinoid product actually opposes marijuana legalization. Insys Therapeutics (NASDAQ: INSY) doesn’t want more states to legalize weed and has urged the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in the past to not lower the bar for some marijuana laws. Here’s how marijuana legalization could hurt Insys’ fortunes — and perhaps those of other biotechs with cannabinoid products, especially GW Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: GWPH).

Why Insys wants to just say No?

Insys donated $500,000 in 2016 to Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, a group opposing legalization of recreational marijuana in Arizona. The company’s investment paid off: Arizona voters rejected the proposition for legalizing recreational marijuana. However, the state’s voters narrowly approved the legal use of medical marijuana in 2010

Why did Insys Therapeutics fight against expanded marijuana legalization in its home state? The company’s official line was that the proposition on the ballot last year failed “to protect the safety of Arizona’s citizens, and particularly its children.” However, Insys also said that the company “firmly believes in the potential clinical benefits of cannabinoids.”

THE magical effect of magic mushrooms was hailed in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, during an application by a horticulturist, who is fighting to have this fungus legalized.

Channelie Vanderberg (corr) turned to the court for a stay of her prosecution in the lower court on charges of possession and cultivating magic, mushrooms, pending a legal challenge in the Western Cape High Court.

But prior to her present employment, while she was living in Pretoria with her estranged husband, they cultivated a range of natural healing plants, which they distributed to the public.

Vandenberg explained that Psilocybin is a naturally occurring hallucinogenic substance found in various types of mushrooms.

“It is known to have therapeutic applications and its use dates back thousands of years where it was used by ancient indigenous cultures around the globe.”

Magic mushrooms are the world’s safest drug, according to a brand new study done by Global Drug Survey.

The study, prepared by the GDS Core Research Team (Dr. Adam Winstock, Dr. Monica Barratt, Dr. Jason Ferris & Dr. Larissa Maier), is the world’s largest drug survey, which aims “to make drug use safer regardless of the legal status by sharing information in a credible and meaningful way.”

Focusing on the examination of different drugs and their usages, the ‘GDS’ works to inform the public on the effects of global drug usage, while promoting drug safety.

Police officers in North Carolina got a little more than they bargained for this week, when they tracked down what they thought was a rural cannabis cultivation site, but instead uncovered a half-acre field full of poppy plants ready to be turned into opium, the base form of heroin.

According to CNN, Catawba County Sheriffs went to the rural home of 37 year-old Cody Xiong, who they suspected of growing marijuana. When they got there the man didn’t even attempt to hide his uniquely illicit garden.

The half-acre plot had 2,000 pounds of poppies, with an eventual estimated street value of $500 million.

Xiong will most likely face charges of manufacturing a Schedule II narcotic and drug trafficking, but he will go down in history – Captain Jason Reid of the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office told reporters that the bust was only the second large-scale opium production shut down on U.S. soil.

Patients and activists have long fought for the legalisation of medical cannabis, but, despite mounting evidence pointing to its benefits in both pain relief and the treatment of specific conditions, have always stumbled on strong resistance by mainstream attitudes. According to Health Minister Giorgos Pamboridis, the main problem has been a “widespread, albeit false, notion that it somehow helps legitimise the use of recreational cannabis”.

A set of government-proposed regulations to allow the import, distribution and use of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis, unveiled and put to public consultation in February, would, if approved by parliament, allow government to issue two licences for a period “up to 15 years”.

But the government’s proposal for the drastic overhaul of the law on medical cannabis comes with regulation so detailed and tight, making abuse – by the licensees or recreational users – next to impossible, that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the mood of people like Evdokas is hardly celebratory.

According to this document, each individual has the right “to freely choose from among different treatment procedures” and “to refuse a treatment or a medical intervention”.

A second limitation, Evdokas said, the bill places restrictions on which doctors can prescribe the drug.

If you’re looking to play it safe when it comes to illicit substances, look no further than the humble shroom. It’s non-addictive, hard to overdose on, and you can grow it yourself. And, according to a massive report by the Global Drug Survey, it sends the fewest people to the emergency room of any drug on the market. Take that, meth.

Perhaps the most dangerous thing about psychedelic mushrooms is that they’re easily confused for the poisonous kind. There are over 100 varieties of psilocybin-producing shroomies, which is the chemical that makes you trip when you eat them. Some of them are bound to look like toxic varietals, especially if you’re in a hurry to get high.

Instead, you should befriend a mycologist (a person who studies mushrooms) so that they can help you find the sort of shroom. Most people who don’t buy their mushrooms tend to pick them themselves rather than grow them, which is the riskier—albeit faster—option. The magic varieties grow on every continent, though if you happen to be somewhere subtropical and humid you’ll find more types.

LSD also lasts longer and affects way more receptors in your brain than shrooms do. Psychedelic mushrooms only directly affect your serotonin receptors, whereas LSD affects serotonin, dopamine, and a whole host of other stimulating receptors in your brain. Shrooms may have some indirect effect on dopamine levels, but it’s minimal at best. The longer, potentially more intense results from LSD aren’t likely to do actual damage to your brain. But they are likely to give you a bad trip. And really, that’s the main danger with all psychedelics—if you’re anxious before you start or you begin to feel paranoid, the mind-altering impacts from the drugs only amplify those feelings.

Other than that, hallucinogens are pretty safe. They can reduce anxiety, ease the intense pain of cluster headaches, alleviate OCD symptoms, improve depression, and boost the psychological state of terminal cancer patients. A 2006 double-blind study sponsored by the U.S. government found that about 80 percent of people who took psilocybin reported that their well-being improved and remained that way for months after their psychedelic experience (the control group did not).